Colored polymeric resin articles are utilized in all areas of commerce ranging from automotive and aerospace products (e.g., dashboards, interior components, seats, tubing, under the hood components such as fluid reservoirs and the like, light lenses, and the like), medical articles (e.g., tubing, oxygen masks, contact lenses, eye glasses, monitors, sensors, and the like) and toys, to telecom (e.g., cellular phone covers and housings, PDAs (personal data assistants, also referred to as pocket or handheld computers) 2-way radios, transmitters and receivers), consumer electronics (e.g., radios, portable CD players), and business equipment (e.g., computers, printers, fax machines). Colors enhance the aesthetics, salability and often the useful life of an article, and can help distinguish brands.
Some colorants, however, can adversely affect the ability to cure through the polymeric resin. As a result, colors, e.g., those in the red-violet portion of the spectrum (i.e., blue-shaded red colorants), have had limited commercial use in such applications. There remains a need and desire to discover colorants that reside in the red-violet portion of the spectrum, that are compatible with polymeric resins and are heat stable enough to sustain the heat involved in the processing (e.g., extrusion, molding, thermoforming) of such resins, and which yield transparent compositions allowing the desired curing in the UV region (at or around about 365 nm).
In some applications, transmission in the UV region is desired to allow for data transmission using for instance near visible light-emitting diodes (“LEDs” in the 370 nanometer (nm) to 390 nm range). Colors such as those in the red-violet portion of the spectrum are needed to filter the received wavelengths and minimize the noise from outside light thus providing a better signal reception. In other systems, such as optical media (e.g. DVD), a good transmission at about 650 nm is also desired in combination with UV curability.